2009-2010 Faculty

In the past year, eleven new tenure-track faculty members and two lecturers joined the School of Science. We're proud to welcome these distinguished colleagues and researchers to our team.

Gregory Anderson

Welcoming opportunities for collaboration, Dr. Anderson joins the biology department after completing more than four years of post-doctoral study in the Department of Microbiology and Immunology at Dartmouth Medical School.

Anderson brings extensive experience researching bacterial interactions with host tissues. Most recently, he developed a novel model of Pseudomonas aeruginosa biofilm formation on cystic fibrosis-derived airway cells in culture, using this model to study the molecular basis of pathogenesis and biofilm formation on the lung epithelium. His studies were supported by a post-doctoral research grant from the Cystic Fibrosis Foundation.

Anderson earned a Ph.D. in Molecular Microbiology and Microbial Pathogenesis from Washington University in St. Louis. He is eager to establish an externally funded program in molecular biofilm research, investigating bacterial biofilms in pathogenesis and chronic infection.

Stephen Boehm

Dr. Stephen Boehm, tenured associate professor of psychology, brings along a five year grant for $1.25 million from The National Institute on Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism to extend research on the role gamma-aminobutyric acid (GABA) receptors play in alcohol consumption and binge drinking. His research will provide information on the changes in brain GABA systems during alcohol intake to better understand alcohol use, binge drinking, tolerance and addiction.

Boehm comes from the State University of New York in Binghamton (SUNY) where he held a faculty position and received a K01 NIH grant to study the mRNA expression in the brain following repeated alcohol exposure using real-time PCR. He completed his postdoctoral studies in Behavioral and Molecular Pharmacology at the University of Texas at Austin, received a Bachelor of Arts in psychology from the University of Northern Colorado, and a Ph.D. in Behavioral Neuroscience from Oregon Health & Science University in Portland.

Hua Chen Chang

Prior to her current position in the biology department, Dr. Hua-Chen Chang was a research assistant professor in the HB Wells Center for Pediatric Research in the Indiana University School of Medicine. Chang’s research involves understanding the fundamental nature of immune physiology with the ultimate goals of manipulating immunity effectors in various diseases, including cancer, inflammatory disease and autoimmune disease.

Chang has an internal grant currently funded by the Lung Cancer Working Group to assess the hypothesis that chronic lung inflammation alters the pattern of CpG methylation in lung epithelial cells, which promotes and accelerates lung carcinogenesis. Her future research objectives will focus on the interplay between the immune responses and human diseases. Chang is a graduate of Purdue University’s doctoral program in veterinary pathobiology.

William Cross

Dr. Bill Cross began teaching at IUPUI on a part-time basis in 2007 and this fall begins his first semester as a full-time lecturer. Cross graduated from Caltech in 1990, majoring in applied mathematics, and earned a master’s degree in mathematics from the University of Chicago a year later. He completed his Ph.D. in Operations Research at the University of Michigan. While completing research for his thesis, Cross completed his ASA in a span of four sittings, scoring a 10 on each exam. He obtained the Fellow of the Society of Actuaries (FSA) designation in 2004 while working for his previous employer, Conseco. For nine years, Cross taught gifted students at a summer program at Duke University. He is a former Silver Medalist in the International Mathematics Olympiad and a former Putnam Fellow.

Melissa Cyders

Clinical psychologist, Dr. Melissa Cyders, joins the Department of Psychology to extend research on the integration of clinical psychology and neuropsychological concepts. Cyders will focus on the role of emotional and affective processing in risky behaviors, choices and temperaments. She will study how extreme emotions can lead to more impulsive behavior, and corresponding brain activities, neurotransmitter functions and temperaments via neuroimaging techniques.

Cyders completed a pre-doctoral internship at the VA Ann Arbor Healthcare System and the University of Michigan Medical School where she applied helped veteran patients suffering from post traumatic stress disorder and dealing with chronic pain conditions. She earned her Bachelor of Arts degree in Psychology and Spanish at Ohio University and Masters and Ph.D. in Clinical Psychology from the University of Kentucky. Cyders has published several papers and received two grant awards, including a National Research Service Award from the National Institute on Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism.

Guoli Dai

Assistant professor of biology Guoli Dai, was recently awarded a five-year, $1.5 million grant from the The National Institute of Diabetes and Digestive and Kidney Diseases to study the role of a transcription factor Nrf2 in regulating hepatocyte proliferation in response to liver injury. For the past 20 years, Dai’s research has focused on molecular mechanisms governing hepatocyte proliferation and liver regeneration as well as the molecular and cellular mechanisms controlling maternal hepatic growth response to pregnancy. He joins the Department of Biology and Center for Regenerative Biology and Medicine from University of Kansas Medical Center. Dai earned his Ph.D. in molecular and cellular biology from the College of Agricultural and Animal Sciences at Jilin University as well as his masters in molecular and cellular biology from Changchun Veterinary University. He holds a certificate in computer information system from Johnson County Community College and has held various research and teaching positions at universities and medical centers.

Haibo Ge

Organic chemist, Dr. Haibo Ge, joins the Department of Chemistry and Chemical Biology to further extend the organic and medicinal chemistry research programs at IUPUI. Already making a mark with the local science community, Ge has engaged in a strategic partnership with Dr. Qizhaung Ye, a professor at the IU School of Medicine, to synthesize and modify the structures of biologically active natural products for the development of anti-cancer agents to treat a specific type of cancer: estrogen receptor-negative breast cancer.

A native of China, Ge and a fellow student patented a specific method to effectively prepare organic chemical compounds. He plans to continue work in organic methodology development to provide new ways for certain organic chemical transformations. Ge has been an active researcher for the past 10 years earning his post doctorate at The Scripps Research Institute at La Jolla, Calif. and Ph.D. at the University of Kansas.

James Hill

Completing both a master’s degree and Ph.D. at Vanderbilt University, Dr. James Hill begins his first full-time faculty position at the School of Science this fall. Hill is an active researcher with several publications, including a book chapter, to his credit.

Most recently, as a research assistant for Vanderbilt’s Institute for Software Integrated Systems (ISIS) - Distributed Object Computing (DOC) Group, Hill was involved in researching and developing a system execution modeling tool - the Component Workload Emulator (CoWorkEr) Utilization Test Suite (CUTS) - that allows DRE system developers and engineers to analyze and validate large-scale distributed system QoS properties, such as performance, on its target architecture from design to production time. While a visiting researcher at auction Web site eBay Inc. in 2007, Hill was the lead developer and QA engineer on a start-up project for optimizing eBay’s backend search engine by locating transient errors that impact performance.

Lei Li

Dr. Lei Li, assistant professor in bioinorganic chemistry, brings a three year NIH R00 grant to gain a better understanding on how radical enzymes fulfill biological functions. His research will focus on the DNA repair enzyme named spore photoproduct lyase (SPL). Li’s research in the area of bioinorganic chemistry has led to the design of copper complexes as anti-cancer drugs earning him two international patent applications and the “Outstanding Invention of the Year Award” from the University of Maryland.

He joins the Department of Chemistry and Chemical Biology from University of Michigan where he received the Pathway to Independence Award from the NIH. This award at K99 phase enabled Li to study the structure and mechanisms of radical enzymes including the SPL. Upon completion of the K99 phase of the grant, Li began the R00 phase conducting research of SPL in the chemistry lab at IUPUI this month. Li earned his Ph.D. in Bioinorganic Chemistry from The Johns Hopkins University as well as his Masters of Science in organometallic chemistry and Bachelors of Science in chemistry from Peking University in Beijing, China.

Ryan Martin

Assistant mathematics professor Dr. Ryan Martin earned his Ph.D. from Purdue University. Martin’s primary area of research is mixture models, traditionally used for modeling heterogeneous populations, but now used for statistical inference in some new and excitingapplications, particularly in gene expression profiling, where tens of thousands of genes are analyzed simultaneously. His work is applicable in gene expression profiling, which consists of extracting a genetic profile from two groups of individuals – one with and one without a particular disease (such as cancer), but otherwise similar, and identifying the tiny proportion of genes out of 500,000 that are differentially expressed. Doctors can use this genetic information to identify and treat at-risk patients in a more timely manner.

Martin is currently working on some theoretical solutions to address these problems, as well as developing new mixture model-based methodologies for these types of large-scale classification problems that can be widely applied in the practical world.

Patrick Morton

Dr. Patrick Morton joined the School of Science in 2002 as an adjunct professor and became a professor of mathematics six years later. Prior to coming to IUPUI, Morton was a member of the mathematics faculty at Wellesley College for 15 years, serving as department chair for three years. He held post-doctoral positions at Caltech and at Harvard University, where he was awarded a National Science Foundation (NSF) Postdoctoral Fellowship.

Morton researches extensively in the fields of number theory, algebra and geometry, with a strong interest in mathematical logic and the foundations of mathematics. Most recently, he authored a series of papers on complex multiplication. Morton earned his undergraduate degree from the University of Arizona and his Ph.D. from the University of Michigan.

Roland Roeder

Dr. Roland Roeder earned a Ph.D. from Cornell University before completing two postdoctoral fellowships – a one-year appointment at the Fields Institute (part of the University of Toronto), followed by two years in the Department of Mathematics at the University of Toronto. He was most recently a lecturer at the Institute of Mathematical Sciences at Stony Book University in New York.

Roeder’s research focus is in three areas: complex dynamics in several variables, hyperbolic geometry and applications of dynamical systems theory to physics. While at Cornell, he received the National Science Foundation (NSF) Integrative Graduate Research and Training Fellowship, as well as the National Defense Science Engineering and Graduate Fellowship.

Robert Stewart

An as research scientist and part-time lecturer at the School of Science since 1995, Dr. Robert Stewart begins his first semester as a full-time senior lecturer in psychology this fall. Throughout his career, Stewart has researched extensively in the fields of behavioral pharmacology, psychopharmacology, biological psychology, motivation and learning. His pre-clinical research uses models to test reinforcement, choice behavior, conditioned drug effects, anxiety and stress, and drug tolerance and sensitization.

Affiliated with the Alcohol Research Center on the IUPUI campus, Stewart is currently engaged in the examination of neuropeptide systems involved in the regulation of ingestion and response to stress to determine their role in alcohol consumption and dependence.

Stewart completed his undergraduate and graduate studies at the University of Toronto, earning a Ph.D. in pharmacology in 1988.